Every time someone tells me to “just do it” they are acting in their own interests and not in mine. I think it is some insidious American plot to reencode reflection as laziness or “procrastination.”

Do not just do it, you will become a cog, someone else’s tool, or a workaholic. Step back and reflect. Or, to rephrase: only just do the things you really want to just do.

I wanted to leave academia after my first job, and stay in that city. I wanted to say no to my first book contract. Those who said “just do it” were referring to staying in academia and then forcing that dishonest book out.

I have a lot of resentment of professors, as you can see. Today I must, must, keep on saying, every fifteen minutes, that I am a competent adult, or the current ones and their ghosts will stampede me.

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In the meeting starting soon, my training says it is a minor issue and I should move for a quick decision, not care what it is, and get back to my real work. Just get it done. The truth is that it is a decision that will have a strong impact, for a long time. Stand back and reflect.

Secretos y Saberes

1. While writing here is an excellent exercise for my English style and for writing as such, it is bad for my style in Spanish. Therefore some posts may be in languages other than English.

2. Corybantic, rather anarchical and possibly Liangian, this blog is opposed to everything I find mean. It criticizes things you may hold dear. It resists authoritarianism and received ideas. It vaporizes Fascists.

3. This blog is a codex you have found. It speaks to one and all. But it also holds secrets and hides its face, for I who now perform the ancient text must adapt its words for modernity. I am a sculpted skull on a stela at Copán.